


trapped in the closet

by losestelia



Category: ONF (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Childhood Friends, M/M, Slight Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:42:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27076696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losestelia/pseuds/losestelia
Summary: hyojin has a lot of feelings he doesn't know what to do with so he gives seungjoon a call :)
Relationships: Kim Hyojin/Lee Seungjoon | J-Us
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	trapped in the closet

**Author's Note:**

> i keep wanting to post things bc writing is really how i express myself(i know very original rose) and i get antsy when i'm just writing and writing(bc i'm always writing like at all times of day) but never sharing it. it's like yelling my feelings at a wall. but i didn't want to make everything i write about me. i want to create fun things or moving things that we can all look at go "well, that was cool, right?". but today my shoulders are heavy. today, without waxing poetic here, i sat down at my keyboard and wrote what was on my mind in one sitting. and it turned out this way. sorry if it makes absolutely no sense!! i ramble with hyoj when i'm feeling especially ~bonkers~  
> enjoy
> 
> (also yes this title is from that weird r.kelly series where he's telling a story through song in a closet so uhm fuck r.kelly but this meme was too good to pass up guys)

hyojin holds his hands close to his chest. clutching his left hand with his right and pressing the sensitive pads of his fingers into his knuckles, hard, until it’s like his bones are touching directly. he’s hiccuping, taking breaths in trios, making the most disturbed sounds of pain. he wasn’t worried about who would hear him.

he was in the closet. 

his closet was carpeted as a kid. big enough so that you could walk into it a couple of steps. he used to sit against the back wall under the little shelf and rod full of empty hangers waiting to be filled with laundry he’s always too tired to do. used to look out and feel what it was like to be his favorite sweater. to be worn so much that your sleeves frayed and your threads unwound. until the reason you were so beloved was because you'd been beloved for so long. you’d held so much meaning by simply existing. he feels safe. in closets. he feels loved. in a place where no one can hurt him. if he doesn't want to be heard he can just shut the door. where you can turn on the light or turn it off, sit in darkness or sit in light- sit surrounded by sunshines. surrounded by clean clothes, sit surrounded by dirty things. sit surrounded by all of the things he's loved. before he knows what he’s doing his phone is in his hand and against his face, held steady by the sweat on his cheek with no help from his shaking hand. seungjoon never set a voicemail- it’s the one that comes with the phone that implores him to leave a call-back number. the long beep comes for him to leave a voicemail and he doesn’t know what to say.

“hey so-” his voice is phlegmy and depressing, he clears his throat, “sorry it’s- i don’t want to sound dramatic or anything i just. god, i already sound dramatic don’t i-” he laughs a little but it tumbles out of his mouth without meeting his vocal cords. it wheezes past his lips as a pointless noise. hyojin swallows and starts again. “i’ve just been thinking a lot about who i am and _what_ i am and i’ve gotten nowhere. this isn’t something i want to tell you in a voicemail like it’s the early 90’s this is- it’s personal, okay? so you can call me back if you want but, i really want to wait until you get home. there's so much- i mean there's _some_ things i have to tell you.” his voice is evening out and he ponders just deleting this voicemail and tricking his brain into calming down.

but he has no idea how to delete a voicemail.

“okay. bye.” he says after a while of trying to remember what number does what on the keypad. jamming a wet thumb into the red button. he tosses his phone back at the floor. it clatters. his closet isn’t carpeted now. uncarpeted closets are so weird. 

this closet is small.

it just has a rack on either side- one for his clothes and one for seungjoon’s. there is a back wall but it doesn’t make him feel comfortable it just makes his back hurt with the lumpy baseboards. his phone lights up from the floor. his ringer hasn’t been on since high school. when his ringtone(just a 30 second audio file of seungjoon calling him a little bitch boy(it was funny when seungjoon dared him to set it at a sleepover(god, they had a lot of sleepovers how did no one think there was something between them(technically there isn’t( _anyway_ ))))) went off in his physics class and he got his test thrown out because his teacher swore up and down it had been a student telling him what the average acceleration was for an object in freefall. seungjoon had bought him ice cream after school that day and didn’t laugh at him when he got frustrated and tears fell suddenly across his cheeks. he thinks every day about that oreo and cookie dough custard seungjoon had helped him finish on the prickly grass in the big empty lot in their neighborhood. he thinks even more about how it tasted completely different on seungjoon’s lips, his tongue, his chin. how every drop of it was sweeter as the sun set earlier than they were ready for that september afternoon. hyojin had really thought summer would last forever.

his phone is still waiting to be answered.

“hey.” 

“hey, you called?” he hears bustling and voices on the other end, “ _hello?_ ” he says it in the funny way they do when they’re saying something obvious(ex: of course i’m gay like _hello?_ )

“i didn’t need anything i just-” what did he ‘just’, “wanted to say ‘hi’ so, uhm, hi.” his laugh comes out normally and seungjoon returns a sweet one over the speaker. 

“is everything alright?” he can tell he’s leaning close to the mic because his voice gets low and whispery, he’s talking only to him. against hyojin’s wishes his heart swells and warms like a plateful of marshmallow about to explode in a microwave. 

“yup. all good, now get back to work. see you later.” he doesn’t let him respond and just ends the call quickly. they really did sound busy and he hopes seungjoon doesn’t call him a ton like he does when he hangs up on him suddenly like this. seungjoon is a lot of things hyojin isn’t but they both share that almost ritualistic obsessiveness over each other. they just can’t leave the other alone. 

his phone lights up again. 

“what.” 

“jokes on you. i got your voicemail.” he doesn’t sound smug, he sounds like a doctor with the results back from the lab, “i know you wanted to tell me when i got home but you know it’s gonna kill me and i don’t get off for another like- fuck, like an hour.” 

“i don’t want to say it over the phone.” he can feel himself start to cry again and he knows seungjoon can hear it and he’s probably doing that neck scratchy thing he does when he gets uncomfortable with emotion. 

“i know but could you give me a hint?” 

“you should really get back to work.”

“i’m in the faculty bathroom it’s okay. olive garden can run itself it doesn’t need- no, it _desperately_ needs me but they can go without for a bit.” hyojin translates that to mean he’s more important than the smooth running of an entire establishment because it gives him that marshmallow feeling again. 

“sure, a hint.” hyojin sits up straight on the floor, collecting himself, “i can do that.” 

“you sure can.” he hears seungjoon grunt like he's sitting down and the thought of him crouching on an olive garden bathroom floor is what pushes the words out of him.

“i’m in the closet.”

seungjoon sighs, “aren’t we all, dear friend.” 

“yeah but i mean, like, literally.” seungjoon hums, “and metaphorically too.”

“this is raising more questions than answers, man.” 

“look.” he says, prepping to say some words he’s not used to letting leave his mouth.

“i need to stop running from the fact that i like guys. and i really just, fuck it- need to stop running from the fact that i like you.” 

he’s thankful for the general chaos of olive garden on the other line. it leaves him more hungry for shrimp scampi than internally withering and dying.

“then stop running.” seungjoon’s voice is the cold condensation from his little plastic cup full of ice cream running down his fingers as he holds it away from he and seungjoon’s melding mouths. it’s that real and tangible stimulus that reminds him the world isn’t just hot kisses and sweet chocolate caught in the crowns of your teeth. 

“you make it sound easy.” hyojin leans his elbow on the wood-paneled floor, “i’m sitting in our closet crying over accepting who i am and what we are and it’s the hardest thing ever- i wish it wasn’t hard.”

“yeah.” he hates that seungjoon hasn’t accepted or rejected his backward confession but prays that he keeps it this way. so he can tell him in person. he wants to see him now.

“that was way more than a hint.” hyojin mumbles beneath a laugh.

“i hope not.” his heart pounds, “i hope we can talk about this in-depth in exactly 54 minutes.”

he bites his lip to keep from sounding like he’s grinning like crazy, “yeah. yeah, okay.” 

“olive garden is crumbling around me so i might have to go.”

“oh okay.” he wants to tell him to stay but when employee of the month for 2 consecutive months tells you they need to get back to work, it’s against the rules to keep them. 

“i’ll see you at home.”

“yup.” hyojin pushes the closet door open and it swings all the light from he and seungjoon’s shared room inside. he looks at the photo albums and old yearbooks he’d dragged out onto the bed. the little(poorly edited) love poems seungjoon had written him and the hastily scribbled songs he’s composed on stolen manuscript paper. all not so subtly centering around big round eyes and high-pitched laughter. they were both stupid with love- drunk off of it before it was legal. but they never said the words, told their parents or friends, made the obligatory instagram post. they slept in the same bed, back-hugged making meals for each other, kissed slowly and sweetly when the other got home from work. but only at home. only from the comfortable and beautiful view of their closet. a closet was good enough when he was a kid, when it was a comfortable place to think and sort yourself out before facing everything that made you feel like you had to be in a closet at all. the hardwood hurts his knees, the flicking lights made him dizzy, it was always way too hot in here without an air vent. 

“hyojin?”

“yeah?” 

“i love you- and i know you don’t like saying that, don’t feel like you have to. i just wanted to tell you before- well, before i had to be assistant manager of this hellscape for another 53 minutes.” that makes hyojin laugh loud, it catches him off guard now that the door is open. his laugh echoes. 

“just don’t die. dying is bad.” 

“you don’t say?” he hears seungjoon hoist himself up from wherever he was crouching, “we’ll talk later.”

“can’t wait.” he can’t tell if seungjoon means “talk” like they “talked” on the bathroom counter last tuesday. or talk like a conversation- with words. he’s starting to hope seungjoon thinks he means sex so he won’t risk saying those weird 3 words in conversation. or get into the psychology of why it’s so hard for him to even think them. 

“bye.”

“see you soon.” 

**Author's Note:**

> well, that was cool....right?
> 
> thanks for reading friends :3


End file.
